a cult is generally recognized to have a leader who is absolute, and writings followed outside the accepted scriptures. that's pretty broad, but a way to evaluate the difference between a cult and mainstream religion.

here is the problem: the definition of a cult would include Catholicism, Scientology, Mormonism, etc. so, in the absences of a way to objectively differentiate, it's better to leave all alone as long if they are not endangering children, killing their own, or endangering the general population.

we have to evaluate them in the context of what they are currently doing, not what they have done before. if we use history, we'd have to indict the catholic church as historically one of the most murderous cults, and islam as currently one of the most murderous cults.

« Last Edit: August 17, 2012, 06:27:03 PM by kathyp »

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Get us a page number of the Law that says “ye shall control the people’s lives, not just their health”.

if you control peoples health care, what do you not control in their lives?

you should read the thing. it's over 2000 pages with much of it TBD. we still don't know what all it will say when they are done with it. what we do know is that with each passing addition, the cost goes up. cost to individuals, cost to the health care industry, cost to the insurance industry, and cost to the government...which all translates into cost to the individual.

what happens when you have a huge program, supported by a huge bureaucracy, with ever increasing costs and a declining % of the population paying into it? you end up with programs like medicare and SSI, going broke and no one with the guts to fix them. with medicine, it will be worse than going broke. we can see what has happened in other countries. rationed care. degrading facilities. fewer people choosing the career and those who do may be of lesser quality. far fewer people going into specialties. all the associated businesses cutting back. with the new fees on medical equipment manufacturers and the new taxes on pharmaceutical companies, i think we'll see much of this faster than i had originally anticipated.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

you should read the thing. it's over 2000 pages with much of it TBD. we still don't know what all it will say when they are done with it. what we do know is that with each passing addition, the cost goes up. cost to individuals, cost to the health care industry, cost to the insurance industry, and cost to the government...which all translates into cost to the individual.

Lets talk about re-writing history again!

"obamacare"is otherwise known as HR 3590 and is exactly 899 pages long.. You could read the whole thing in two days tops. The drafts were 1000s of pages long but drafts are just that. Drafts; stuff gets cut and cropped until they have a final product.

Now let me outline a few of it's provisions. Hospitals hate some of these, but because we are trying to get into compliance we have started implementing the provisions on ourselves ahead of time.

The old system we got paid for every test, medication, band-aid that we used to treat a patient regardless of diagnosis. The more we used and billed for, the more we got paid.

Under Obamacare we get paid based on the diagnosis. So if we admit a person for a stroke we get paid a lump sum of money to treat that patient based on an average of what it cost nationally to treat a stroke patient. So the more resources we use, the less we make... But then there is a second twist. That lump sum goes into a national pool and we only get a % of it biased on a patient satisfaction survey that the dept of health will be administering.

So for example: say the cost to treat a stroke is 10.00 and that is what every hospital in the country gets paid to treat it. But my hospital has a patient satisfaction score of 60%, we only get 6.00 of that 10.00. The remaining 4% stays in the pool and we lost that money. (one of the provisions hospitals hate.)

The old way we admitted everybody who told a Doctor that they wanted to be admitted... So Grandma gets a headache and comes to the ED. The Dr asks if she is dizzy, she reply "well may be a little". She has two signs of a stroke... So we do a head CT, MRI, EKG, ECHO, and Carotid duplex study and admit her for a stroke. The next day the Neurologist comes in, looks at those results and says, not a stroke, send her home. We bill for all those tests and get paid.

Under the new System Third party audits will be done. Every Patient we admit with an inappropriate diagnosis we don't get paid for anything. So now we have to do a better job of assessing patients and assigning appropriate diagnosis's. It will no longer be enough to have an MD's reasonable assumption of Diagnosis.

In the past year we have been operating under an assumption that the law applies now. We have an outside company surveying our patients using a similar tool to what the Gov will be using. We have increased our score from 68 to about 77, so we still have a long way to go. We have also been penalizing the admitting MDs and self auditing our diagnosis. The Unit I work on has 31 beds and we went from being full almost all the time with patients waiting on other units for a bed to open up, to having 4-5 empty beds all the time and seriously having to look at staffing.

So it is a very real possibility that we could see a huge decrease in healthcare demand and I could loose my job. But I am still willing to give it a chance. Probably some hospitals will completely go under, other's will do well. We could end up without any private for profit hospitals and all hospitals become local city run like the Hospitals in NYC. That would be a bad situation and could happen. But that would also eliminate the need for Medicare and Medicaid.

It could be a good thing that rains in healthcare costs, it could bankrupt hospitals. We will not know until we are there.

here is the word count which i don't think includes the constant edicts coming from HHS.

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Under the new System Third party audits will be done. Every Patient we admit with an inappropriate diagnosis we don't get paid for anything. So now we have to do a better job of assessing patients and assigning appropriate diagnosis's. It will no longer be enough to have an MD's reasonable assumption of Diagnosis.

this is a problem with the way health care is now but it's not about what the hospitals may or may not get paid for. if grandma comes in dizzy and with a headache and the tests are not done, and she is sent home only to come back in having had a stroke, the hospital is sued for millions of dollars. tort reform would take care of much of the problem, but the trial lawyers have a strong lobby and have opposed it every time. some states have been successful in capping compensation, but many have not....or have not tried.

the problem with obama care is that it punished doctors and hospitals for doing what they consider necessary. it's already a problem with medicare and this will be passed on to all of us. there is a balance but it won't be found with the government, anymore than it is found with the courts.

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Under the new System Third party audits will be done

an unelected and unaccountable, except to the government, 3rd party. you want to put your trust in them rather than your doctor?

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In the past year we have been operating under an assumption that the law applies now. We have an outside company surveying our patients using a similar tool to what the Gov will be using. We have increased our score from 68 to about 77, so we still have a long way to go. We have also been penalizing the admitting MDs and self auditing our diagnosis. The Unit I work on has 31 beds and we went from being full almost all the time with patients waiting on other units for a bed to open up, to having 4-5 empty beds all the time and seriously having to look at staffing.

wasn't this the constant complaint against HMOs? cost before care? it's already putting a big burden on providers with all the "free" stuff that was up front. this is by design, both to make it more palatable to the public and to start jacking up insurance rates so that people/business can no longer afford to pay for insurance.

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We will not know until we are there.

but we do know because we can see how it has worked in other countries. we don't need to wait and see.as for getting rid of medicare and medicaid, i think that is the goal. they will be rolled into the exchanges at government expense. in the mean time, because so many will end up on the government approved exchanges due to the cost to business, the left will essentially have achieved their goal of single payer. private insurance will be so prohibitively expensive people will have no choice but to turn to government programs.

a better solution, and one that clinics and urgent care facilities are using with success, is to go back to a cash for care system. people will shop for services and get the best deal. in this, those places not able to provide services at a good value will also go under and those left will compete for patients. competition makes cost go down and quality go up. people can still buy insurance, but most will find that when they are younger and healthy, it's far cheaper to pay for what you use, than to pay for the guy down the streets viagra.of course, americans would have to stop expecting that health care insurance is a a right of employment......

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

If you are going to use a page number to boost your position, don't discredit a page number when somebody shows you your error. Also don't rely on a Media outlet for your source. You can go straight to the bill and look at the font for yourself, it is public record and googling HR 3590 will give you a full text version to inspect.

I tried to find out how long Romneycare is. The first section passed is chapter 58 of the 2006 mass law. It is 70 pages long. Not to bad, but then I realized that it was spread out through multiple chapters including 111, 148, 224, 232, and 461 and if each section is about the same length as the first...

ok, i will stipulate that the obama care bill, only partially written, is however long you wish it to be.

you are missing the point, which may be intentional?

even if it were only 400 pages, we started a whole country with a total of 6 pages. ok, so they were big pieces of paper and the folks might have had small handwriting....

400, or 4000, it creates a huge bureaucracy with many of the rules not yet written. for all the 100's of pages, we still don't know what we have, but as much as we know, is bad.

i really don't care how long romney care is. just as i don't care if VT has gay marriage, or CO won't let you collect rain water. these are the things that belong to the states. if they want to try something, it's up to them. these are not things that belong to the federal government and should be forced on the entire population.

BTW blue, i have read it. have you?

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

i have a question though. did the word count change or only the page count? ;)

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

... probably not one of us who couldn't find kin held slave by someone if we could go far enough back. at some point, get over it.

I agree but what so many of us forget or were never taught in school is that the first foreign war America fought was against a power collectively known as the Barbary Pirates. The "...Halls of Tripoli" in the Marine Corps hymn refers to the Berber peoples of North Africa who inhabited and ruled Tripoli. Don't forget that the Barbary Pirates raided South along the Atlantic Coasts of Africa and as far west as South America, while raiding as far North as Iceland, and Ireland.

Also don't forget that the Berber City State of Tripoli was the terror of the Mediterranean world. The Berbers were the slave suppliers to the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary Pirates regarded all of the Mediterranean basin as their hunting grounds and as much of the rest of the world as they could sail to and return from at a profit. They also regarded the non Muslim peoples of Africa as their God given prey.

Never forgetting the teachings of Nicole Machiavelli, the European Powers paid the Barbary Pirates to enforce exclusive trading zones that each of the major European powers sought to secure for their merchants sole benefit. This brought the Berbers into conflict with a new nation called The United States of America. We insisted on all nations having free passage of all the oceans and seas. The new nation of America also had a bad case of an old Italian Social Disease called, My-Funds-are-Low. We could not afford the yearly expense of buying off the Berbers with tribute. When the Berbers violated the spirit of a treaty first negotiated by President George Washington the stage was set for conflict. Think of the Berbers like they were from today’s Somalia only they had a bigger army and navy that was better equipped than our own.

Like Bluegrass said, I don't care which, what, or the other religion, cult, or true path you follow or that your ancestors belonged to, there is not a single human on the face of the Earth who can not find a chattel slave somewhere in their family's background. Like wise there is not a single human on Earth who can not also find a chattel slave owner hiding somewhere in the same family tree. It could even be the same individual.

i have a question though. did the word count change or only the page count? ;)

The Fox link you sourced states in the very firrt paragraph, we calculate obamacare regulations...." Suggesting they didn't read it either. But after reading through that I now know what they are doing.

They are calculating the word count of the "related bills" as part of the word count of "obamacare"

Lets take a look at the title of some of the "related bills" HR 1203 OFFICIAL TITLE AS INTRODUCED: Providing for consideration of the Senate amendments to the bill (H.R. 3590) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes, and providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 4872) to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 202 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.

That one is an amendment to a bill passed by Reagan. Now we count the whole bill as obamacare?

HR 4872: Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 to modify higher education assistance provisions. (that one doesn't apply to most Americans, only college students) Stamp it Obamacare.

HR 3790: Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009 (that one only applies to service people and their housing benefit) Stamp that one Obama Care.

There are only a handful of related bills they could count so they must have counted the related bills of the related bills as well.....

I somehow am not surprised very much that the person accusing others of re-writing history is now using revisions of reality to promote her own position.

And to answer your other question: I read large parts of the Drafts, but No I have not read the bill as it is passed. My opinion of it doesn't change the fact that the court upheld in and found it Constitutionally binding.

if you read a book, do you look at the page count? i don't. it's not important. it's a big book or not.

most of what comes out of government is to long and to complicated even for congress to understand. i suspect that most of them don't read any of the bills, they read the summary and at best, have some aids skim though it. it's probably one of the major reasons we get such crap from them with so many unintended consequences.

whatever the op was about, this has certainly been a lovely distraction. guess if you can't argue on the merits, you argue on the margins. ;)

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

I don't buy into all the negativity about the Healthcare law. It is true it will cost some money...It's cost and where that money will come from is laid out right in the Bill. It is going to cost the healthcare industry a bunch of money implementing it. And the healthcare Industry has been dumping lots of money into shedding a negative light on the bill. The best option for them is to get it scrapped. The best way to do that is to turn the public against it.

That is why media sources like fox and other twist the truth... Like it's length, it's length has no bearing on anything, but they stretch that truth as far as possible in order to shed a negative light on it. Somebody lining their pockets don't want that law enacted. Every major legislation in the history of this country meets opposition and doom day predictions... A generation later people think all that noise over it was silly.

i'm curious. what is attractive to you about government control of health care?

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

I see the current system bankrupting healthcare every single day... So I guess I am more open to see something new tried than the average person.

The Reality is that the Government has been running healthcare in this country since 1798 when Congress established the Federal Network of Hospitals. By the 1860s we had the predecessor to today's FDA. By the 1870s the Government was quarantining the sick for treatment.......

Government run Healthcare is a 200 year old institution in this country. Nothing new here.

The number of pages in the bill is kind of irrelevant as a lot of things were left to be written by HHS(Health and Human Services) and the IRS will have to add a lot of pages to the tax code to punish citizens.And I can only see it as a growing monstrosity if the plug is not pulled. just look how many regulations the EPA has written(laws written on our behalf) which is probably unconstitutional in itself. I do not like the idea of agencies(unaccountable people) being able to fill in the blanks on open ended laws.

But as far as a VP I think Ryan is far more intelligent than Biden. I think at this point Obama would rather have Hillary on the ticket,but I think she does not want on that sinking ship because this Presidents policies and record would do nothing to advance a second run for the White House for her.

For someone that says page count doesn't matter, he sure is stuck on it... Liberalism... Argue about minutiae instead of the real issue. Pander to the minorities, promise them the world, promise to make the rich white guys pay for it (since all the rich guys are white and republican of course), push programs that keep the welfare class dependent on welfare, and make sure they know they need to vote democrat or else lose their welfare because you know all us conservatives want to throw them all out in the cold if given the chance. I understand why they vote democrat... I don't understand why the rest of them would say Mitt flip flops yet are stupid enough to not see how Obama has lied about everything he has ever said...

BTW... I love u KathyP lol. Tell it. Georgia Republican... Real Georgians don't vote democrat anymore... Only the imports. The rest of us would like to see people get off their butts and look for a job.

Democrats say tax businesses... Theyre building a Caterpillar plant here and giving them tons of tax breaks and incentives... And it's bringing more businesses and people are building houses again... everything is picking up. Wonder if we went the Obama route and asked them to pay more taxes if things would be the same...